Jane Ashford (27 page)

“What do you mean?” asked her younger sister.

“There is something wrong with it. Mr. Gaines said as much. But what?”

“He said, ‘There is, and there isn’t,’” responded Aggie.

Thalia nodded. “Yes, but that means there is. Why bring it up otherwise? Oh, I wish he had told us. I shall worry about it all day.”

A classic Regency romance from Jane Ashford, soon to be released by Sourcebooks Casablanca

The Marriage Wager

Available November 2013

Colin Wareham, fifth baron St. Mawr, stood at the ship’s rail watching the foam and heave of the English Channel. Even though it was late June, the day was damp and cool, with a sky of streaming black clouds and a sharp wind from the north. Yet Wareham made no effort to restrain the flapping of his long cloak or to avoid the slap of spray as the ship beat through the waves. He was bone-tired. He could no longer remember, in fact, when he hadn’t been tired.

“Nearly home, my lord,” said his valet, Reddings, who stood solicitously beside him. He pointed to the smudge of gray at the horizon that was England.

“Home.” Colin examined the word as if he couldn’t quite remember its meaning. For eight years, his home had been a military encampment. In the duke of Wellington’s army, he had fought his way up the Iberian Peninsula—Coruña, Talavera, Salamanca—he had fought his way through France, and then done it again after Napoleon escaped Saint Helena and rallied the country behind him once more. He had lived with blood and death and filth until all the joy had gone out of him. And now he was going home, back to a family that lived for the amusements of fashionable London, to the responsibilities of an eldest son.

Reddings watched his master with surreptitious anxiety. The baron was a big man, broad-shouldered and rangy. But just now, he was thin from the privations of war and silent with its memories. Reddings didn’t like the brooding quiet that had come to dominate St. Mawr, which the recent victory at Waterloo had done nothing to lift. He would even have preferred flares of temper, complaints, bitter railing against the fate that had decreed that his lordship’s youth be spent at war. Most of all, he would have rejoiced to see some sign of the laughing, gallant young lad who had first taken him into his service.

That had been a day, Reddings thought, glad to retreat into memories of happier times. His lordship had returned from his last year at Eton six inches taller than when he left in the fall, with a wardrobe that had by no means kept up with his growth. The old baron, his father, had taken one look at Master Colin and let off one of his great barks of laughter, declaring that the boy must have a valet before he went up to Cambridge or the family reputation would fall into tatters along with his coat. Colin had grinned and replied that he would never live up to his father’s sartorial splendor. They had a bond, those two, Reddings thought.

He’d been a footman, then, and had actually been on duty in the front hall of the house when this exchange took place in the study. He had heard it all, including the heart-stopping words that concluded the conversation. The old baron had said, “Fetch young Sam Reddings. He follows my man about like a starving hound and is always full of questions. I daresay he’ll make you a tolerable valet,” And so Readings had been granted his dearest wish and never had a moment’s regret, despite going off to war and all the rest of it. It was a terrible pity the old baron had died so soon after that day, he thought. He’d be the man to make a difference in his lordship now.

The ship’s prow crashed into a mountainous gray wave, throwing cold spray in great gleaming arcs to either side. The wind sang in the rigging and cut through layers of clothing like the slash of a cavalryman’s saber. It had been a rough crossing. Most of the passengers were ill below, fervently wishing for an end to the journey or, if that were not possible, to their miserable lives.

The pitch and heave of the deck left Colin Wareham unscathed. What an adventure he had imagined war would be, he was thinking. What a young idiot he had been, dreaming of exotic places and wild escapades, fancying himself a hero. Colin’s lip curled with contempt for his youthful self. That naïveté had been wrung out of him by years of hard campaigning. The realities of war made all his medals and commendations seem a dark joke. And what was left to him now? The numbing boredom of the London Season; hunting parties and the changeless tasks of a noble landholder; his widowed mother’s nagging to marry and produce an heir; the tiresome attentions of insipid debutantes and their rapacious parents. In short, nothing but duty. Wareham’s mouth tightened. He knew about duty, and he would do it.

The pale cliffs of Dover were definitely visible now as the ship beat against the wind to reach, shore. The mate was shouting orders, and the sailors were swarming over the ropes. A few hardy gulls added their plaintive cries to the uproar as the ship tacked toward the harbor entrance.

A movement on the opposite side of the deck caught Colin’s eye. Two other passengers had left the refuge of their cabins and dared the elements to watch the landing. The first was most unusual—a giant of a man with swarthy skin, dark flashing eyes, and huge hands. Though he wore European dress, he was obviously from some eastern country, an Arab or a Turk, Colin thought, and wondered what he could be doing so far from home. He didn’t look very happy with his first view of the English coastline.

The fellow moved, and Colin got a clear look at the woman who stood next to him. A gust of wind molded her clothing against her slender form and caught the hood of her gray cloak and threw it back, revealing hair of the very palest gold; even on this dim day, it glowed like burnished metal. She had a delicately etched profile like an antique cameo, a small straight nose, and high unyielding cheekbones, but Colin also noticed the promise of passion in her full lips and soft curve of jaw. She was exquisite—a woman like a blade of moonlight—tall and square-shouldered, perhaps five and twenty, her pale skin flushed from the bitter wind. His interest caught, Colin noticed that her gaze at the shore was steady and serious. She looked as if she were facing a potential enemy instead of a friendly harbor.

As he watched, she turned, letting her eyes run along the coast to the south, her gaze glancing across his. Her expression was so full of longing and loss that he felt a spark of curiosity. Who was she? What had taken her across the Channel, and what brought her back? She turned to speak to the dark giant—undoubtedly her servant, he thought—and he wondered if she had been in the East, a most unlikely destination for a lady. She smiled slightly, sadly, and he felt a sudden tug of attraction. For a moment, he was tempted to cross the deck and speak to her, taking advantage of the freedom among ship passengers to scrape an introduction. Surely that pensive face held fascinating secrets. He took one step before rationality intervened, reminding him that most of the truly tedious women he had known in his life had been quite pretty. It would be unbearable to discover that only silly chatter and wearisome affectation lay behind that beautiful facade.

***

“There it is, Ferik,” she said after a while. “Home.” Her tone was quietly sarcastic.

The huge man viewed the buildings of Dover without enthusiasm. A gull floated by at the level of his head, and he looked at it as if measuring it for the roasting spit.

“When I left here seven years ago,” said the woman, “I had a husband, a fortune, six servants, and trunks of fashionable gowns. I return with little but my wits.”

“And me, mistress,” answered the giant in a deep sonorous voice with a heavy accent to his English.

“And you,” she replied warmly. “I still don’t think you will like England, Ferik.”

“It must be better than where I came from, mistress,” was the reply.

Remembering the horrors she had rescued him from, Emma Tarrant had to agree.

“Except for maybe the rain,” he added, a bit plaintively.

Emma laughed. “I warned you about that, and the cold, too.”

“Yes, mistress,” agreed her huge servitor, sounding aggrieved nonetheless.

Emma surveyed the shore, drinking in the peaked roofs of English houses, the greenery, the very English carriage and pair with a crest on the door, waiting for some passenger. Seven years, she thought, seven years she’d been gone, and it felt like a lifetime. Probably it was a mistake to come back. She only wanted to live among familiar surroundings again, to speak her own language, to feel other than an alien on foreign soil.

The sailors were throwing lines to be secured and readying the gangplank. Men bustled on the docks. “Come, Ferik,” said Emma. “We’d best see to our boxes.”

On the steep, ladderlike stair leading below deck, they had to squeeze past a tall gentleman and his valet who were coming up. Even their few pieces of worn, battered luggage jammed the opening, so that for a moment, Emma was caught and held against the ship’s timbers on one side and the departing passenger on the other. Looking up to protest, she encountered eyes of a startling, unusual blue, almost violet, and undeniable magnetism. From a distance of less than five inches they examined her, seeming to look beneath the surface and search for something important. Emma couldn’t look away. She felt a deep internal pulse answer that search, as if it was a quest she too had been pursuing for a long time. Her lips parted in surprise; her heartbeat accelerated.

Colin Wareham found himself seized by an overwhelming desire to kiss this stranger to whom he had never spoken a word. Her nearness roused him; the startled intelligence of her expression intrigued him. It would be so very easy to bend his head and take her lips for his own. The mere thought of their yielding softness made him rigid with longing.

Then the giant moved, backing out of the passage and hauling one of the offending pieces of luggage with him. The woman was freed. “Are you all right, mistress?” the huge servant asked when she did not move at once.

She started, and slipped quickly down the stair to the lower deck. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you, Ferik.”

“Beg pardon,” murmured Reddings, and hurried up.

Colin hesitated, about to speak. One part of him declared that he would always regret it if he let this woman slip away, while another insisted that this was madness. Reddings leaned over the open hatch above him. “Can I help, my lord?” he asked. The outsized man started down the stair again, effectively filling the opening. It
was
madness, Colin concluded, and pushed past the giant into the open air.

Bestselling author Jane Ashford discovered Georgette Heyer in junior high school and was captivated by the glittering world and witty language of Regency England. That delight led her to study English literature and travel widely in Britain and Europe. Her historical and contemporary romances have been published in Sweden, Italy, England, Denmark, France, Russia, Latvia, and Spain, as well as the United States. Jane has been nominated for a Career Achievement Award by
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. Born in Ohio, Jane currently lives in Boston.